Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · August 16, 2009

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Prayer of the Day

Gracious and loving God,

   Open our eyes to your presence.

      Burn your truth into our hearts.

         Help us welcome the stranger.

            Forgive us for our faults.

               Through Christ we say together,

                  Amen.

Scripture

Jonah 2:10 – 3:3a

Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.

Message

Washed Up

Jacob Thorne

Several years ago, the famous Disciples preacher, Dr. Fred Craddock, who was then the professor of homiletics at Chandler School of Theology, told a story of his own life experience. He said that when he was growing up in north Tennessee, his father refused to attend church. On Sunday mornings, his father was always at home complaining about how late lunch was. Occasionally, the minister would come and talk to Fred’s dad, but Fred’s dad was rough on the minister. Fred’s dad would always say, “I know what you fellows down at the church want. You want another pledge, another name, another dollar. Right? Isn’t that the business that you’re in?”

The minister would shake his head, “No,” and try to talk to him. Fred’s mother would be in the kitchen crying. Fred would feel embarrassed. The conversation would just go in this circle. 

But the minister kept on coming back, kept on having conversations with Fred’s dad, and the conversation always, always repeated itself. Fred’s dad always said the same thing, “You don’t care about me. You just want another dollar and another pledge.”

There was something that Fred’s dad was running from. But neither Fred nor his dad knew what it was. 

Eventually, the years passed, and one day Fred found himself driving across the country to go see his father who was in the hospital and now weighed 74 pounds. The doctors had taken out much of his throat, but it was too late. The radiation had burned him badly. His dad wasn’t able to talk. There was a breathing tube that had been placed in him. Fred said that when he entered the room, and he walked through hospital door, he just stared there for a moment, looking at all of the flowers. On the floor, next to the bed, in the windows, there were tons of flowers. Fred took some time and read each of the cards. They said things like, “Men’s Bible Class,” “Women’s Society,” “Youth Fellowship,” “Children’s Division,” and “Pastor” – almost every single organization of that little church.

Fred’s dad saw his son looking at the cards. Unable to speak, his dad picked up a pencil and a Kleenex box, and he wrote on the box a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.” Fred read the line, and he looked at his dad, and he said, “Dad, what is your story?”

His speechless father took the Kleenex box, and he wrote on it a three-word confession, “I was wrong.”

What Fred’s dad had discovered, in those final days of life, is that he had spent most of his life running from both God and himself.

This morning, as we continue our study of the Minor Prophets, we learn about the life of the prophet Jonah. Jonah is, perhaps, one of the best-known stories of the Bible. We all learn, at a young age, that a giant whale swallows Jonah.

By the way, the word in the Hebrew, never mentions the word “whale.” But a giant whale swallows Jonah. As you read the story of the prophet Jonah, you start to pick up on all of these little subtleties that take place. The prophet Jonah was commanded by God to go preach a message of repentance to the citizens of Nineveh in order that they not be destroyed by God. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. 

If you know some of the ancient history of Israel, then you know that Jonah would have had an extreme dislike of the Assyrians. The Assyrians were not part of the nation of Israel. The Assyrians were a powerful empire that conquered anyone who ever dared to get in their way. Several times, right before the life of Jonah, they had been in battles with Israel.

So, instead of traveling east to Nineveh, like God commands Jonah to do, Jonah decides that he is going to go west to a place called Tarshish. Tarshish, in the ancient world, was about as far opposite of Nineveh as you could get. So, Jonah goes, and he finds passage on a ship. You know how this story goes. They are out on the middle of the sea. The storm really starts to pick up. The waves are crashing over the boat. All of the crew on board are tossing things over the side, saying to one another, “We have no idea what is going on here. Somebody must be upset with us. God must be upset with us.”

Jonah very quietly says, “Well, it might be me. It might be my fault.”

They look at Jonah, and there is not even a pause in the translation of the Hebrew. They just toss him overboard. 

Then you end up in the third chapter of Jonah. There are only four chapters. In the third chapter, after Jonah had been washed up from sea, and spewed from the belly of this giant fish, God once again speaks to Jonah. The Scripture says, “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.”

God said to Jonah, “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to them the message that I give you.”

And this time, Jonah listens to God.

As I spent some time studying this story of Jonah, my first impression is that Jonah is a story of second chances. I also think, as I was studying this story of Jonah, that because of his experience with his dad late in life, Fred Craddock really understood what it means to have a story of second chances. 

Fred has several stories that he is known for. One of those stories is a story about when he was pastor in a little Tennessee church. Every Sunday morning, in this church, there was this beautiful, little seven-year-old girl who would come to church. But her parents never attended. Fred knew this, because everybody in a small town knows everything. On Saturday night, her parents would have, what Fred called, wild and vulgar parties. One Sunday morning, the little girl was at church. As Fred looked out in the pews, he could see her parents sitting next to her. After the service was over, the parents came through the line, and they said to Fred, “This is the first time we have been here.”

Fred said, “I know.”

They said, “Well, do you know what goes on at our house on Saturday nights?”

Fred said, “Everybody knows what goes on at your house on Saturday nights.”

They said, “Well, last night, we were having a really wild party. We were playing the music, and everybody was celebrating. Our seven-year-old girl woke up. She walked down the stairs. She saw that everybody was eating and drinking and having a good time. She said, “Do you mind if I give a blessing?”

Her parents said, “We don’t mind.”

For a minute, the music stopped. That seven-year-old girl stood there in the middle of the room and said, “God is great. God is good. Let us think him for our food.”

Then she walked back up the stairs. In just a few minutes, that entire house emptied out. Everybody left the party.

Her parents turned and looked at each other. They said to one another, “Where are we going with our lives?”

The question, “Where are we going with our lives,” is also the question of Jonah. Perhaps the question for us, too, this morning, is, “Where are we going with our lives? Are we following the will of God?”

If we claim that we believe in Jesus Christ, then we can’t help but think back to some of those early teachings of the New Testament. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus, a poor Jewish carpenter, begins his ministry by walking along the sea. He sees to brothers, Simon and Andrew, casting nets into the sea. He says to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people,” or “I will make you fish for people.” 

Immediately… Immediately they quit what they were doing and decided to follow Jesus. A little while later, Jesus is preaching and teaching in some of the small towns, and he sees the tax collector Matthew. He says to Matthew, “Quit what you are doing and follow me.”

Immediately, Matthew decides to follow Jesus.

When you spend some time thinking about it, the words, “Follow me,” are very scary. I have no doubt that because of fear Jonah did not want to follow God. On the one hand, there is the fear of the unknown, the fear of not knowing what comes next. But, on the other hand, on a deeper level, there is the fear that we may not be good enough, the fear that we may not have what God requires of us, the fear of self-doubt, the fear that we lack courage, the fear that we really don’t have what it takes to do what we need to do, or what God is calling us to do. 

But this fear that we have, that everybody has, has been around for thousands of years. It starts in the very first book of the Bible. In the book of Genesis, God tells Sarah and Abraham to sell everything they own and move 800 miles away. When Abraham shares his vision with Sarah, she is extremely skeptical, but she says to Abraham, “If this is what you really believe, if this is what you think God is calling us to do, then, yes, we need to go.”

A little later in the Bible, Moses and Jeremiah both think they are inadequate for the task that God calls them to do. When the prophet Elijah was called by God, he feared for his own life. The prophets Amos and Isaiah found the message of God too dreadful to announce. But all of those individuals eventually decide to follow the will of God.

But what if we don’t clearly hear those words, “Follow me?” What if there is no audible voice, no burning bush, no 100% certainty? If we wait for something that is clearly definable, if we wait for something with 100% certitude, then we may wait too long and miss both our first and second chance. 

When you read the opening lines of the book of Jonah in Hebrew, the story starts abruptly. Unlike the other prophets in the Old Testament, there is no historical introduction. There is no poetic imagery. There is nothing that describes how God called Jonah. The story just begins. In this short, little story that is only four chapters, it ends just as suddenly as it begins, because it is meant to be, not only a story of Jonah’s life, but also of my life, and a story of your life. 

All too often in today’s world, I think we see this more and more and more. We try to find ways to explain away the unexplainable. We try to run away from something that may seem too powerful. But what if you really paid attention sometime to those deep feelings you have? What if you pay attention to that intuition that you have? What if you pay attention to what is going inside of your heart and what you want to share with others? Instead of running away, or trying to explain it away, what if you said to yourself and to others, “Yes, maybe this is what I am meant to do. Maybe this is what God is calling me to do.” What if you took a risk and trusted completely in God?

The story of Jonah isn’t just about second chances. A main point of the story of Jonah – a point that it took me several times to recognize – is that the story of Jonah is also a story about prejudice, about narrow mindedness. 

Nineveh was the great city in Assyria. It took three days to walk across the entire city. There was a wall that surrounded the city to protect it from enemies that was eight miles in circumference. Assyrians were not only the enemies of Jonah and his people, they also worshipped another god, another deity. They were the complete opposite of Jonah. When God sends Jonah to Nineveh a second time, Jonah proclaims the message to Nineveh in just one short sentence. Jonah says, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

Much to Jonah’s dismay and to Jonah’s irritation, the city of Nineveh immediately repents and changes their ways. Jonah is so very upset that God chooses to be merciful to these people. Jonah yells at God, accusing God of being too kind, too gracious. But God was at work in the lives of people who weren’t like Jonah. And God can’t understand Jonah’s anger and why Jonah would not want to show compassion to others, even if they are opposite of Jonah.

In his book, Holy Fools: Following Jesus with Reckless Abandon, the preacher/pastor/teacher Mathew Woodley tells the story of how six years ago, while drinking his morning coffee, he read the following headline in his small Minnesota newspaper. The headline read: “Cambridge Man Pleads Guilty to Murder and Fatal Crash.” According to the article, Lou Nelson, loaded up on alcohol, hopped into his 1989 Nisan and raced through the streets of northeast Minneapolis. He sped straight through a stop sign, and he slammed into another car instantly killing two people. Based on prior offenses, Lou was given 20 years in prison. 

When he read this story, Mathew couldn’t believe it. Three months earlier, in his office at church, Lou had sat in Mathew’s office and asked Mathew to help him find God. Mathew said that, at first, he didn’t like Lou. He didn’t think Lou was being truthful. He thought Lou was a con artist. With his long hair, with his tobacco-stained teeth, with his arms covered with tattoos, Mathew didn’t think Lou was a person who could be trusted or a person who was honest. Mathew says that as he talked with Lou, he never even ever considered inviting him to church. Lou was just too different. He was too ragged, too messy, too tattooed. 

Mathew’s church, unlike Lou, was what Mathew described as a “tidy tribe of people who had clean hair, white teeth, and untattooed arms.” He didn’t think a guy like Lou would ever fit into his church, so he never tried to invite him. But after he read the newspaper headline, Mathew realized how stunned he was between the gap between Lou’s raggedness and his tidy church. Lou lived outside the boundary, and Mathew had missed his chance to let him in. There is no happy ending to Lou’s story.

I know that, like Mathew, I have, and maybe you have as well, turned away others who were broken. But Mathew, like each of us, does get a second chance. As he continues the ministry of his church… As he continues to reach out to others, Mathew now asks his church this question, “How do we heal the wounds of broken people living in a broken nation?” The answer is it happens person to person within an entire community.

In the very end of the book, Jonah finds himself sitting under a tree. God asks Jonah if he has any reason to feel the way he does. And Jonah has a rather cryptic remark. He says, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 

God rebukes Jonah and ends with a question of his own. God asks, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh?”

The question is never answered. The story of Jonah just ends. Whether or not we will accept the second chance is up to us. The question from God ends with a question about Nineveh. It is also a question of calling and direction. The question is this: “Will you follow God? Will you help look after God’s people? Will you follow that feeling that is deep, deep in your heart?”

As always at Broadway, through Christ, we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

Compassionate God, thank you for a heart so grand that even when your people turn away, you will not let them go. Thank you for sending a voice of repentance when we are like the people of Nineveh. Thank you for sending a whale of a detour when we turn from your purpose and plan. Thank you for setting us up again when we fail, forget, or refuse to acknowledge your plan. Thank you for your constant love and hope in us. Amen.